


The Road Taken

by Morbane



Category: Obernewtyn Chronicles - Isobelle Carmody
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Constructive Criticism Welcome, F/M, Fate & Destiny, First Meetings, POV First Person, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 09:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2263779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosamunde's perspective on the events of <i>Obernewtyn</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Taken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raynidreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/gifts).



When the time of Changing came again, in the year I was sixteen, I learned that I, alone of the Morganna orphans, was to go to the home at Kinraide.

I mourned the friendships I was not allowed to keep. But this change struck me as different to those that had come before. When I was eighteen, I could apply for a Normalcy Certificate. That meant that I would come to Kinraide as a ward of the Council, but I might leave it as a woman fully grown, whose friends were chosen or refused at her own risk, and who might determine her own destiny.

Melia, the guardian at Morganna who led us in sewing, warned me that the way of life at Kinraide was harsher than I had known so far. Kinraide was near the Blacklands, and its special industry was the collection of whitestick, a very dangerous material. Orphans who mishandled it did not live long after. 

"It is a grim place, Rosamunde, and I have heard the keepers there are not as kind to their charges as I am," Melia said. She lifted my chin with two fingers. "It is hard to love those you must lose," she finished softly, and I understood that she was also saying goodbye.

I came to Kinraide in winter; whitestick harvesting would not begin again until the spring. But the guardians were just as cool and distant as Melia had warned me, and the other orphans suspicious and unwelcoming. I tried not to be discouraged. I told myself that surely any slights or hardships I underwent at Kinraide would not leave as great a mark on me, in my life to come, as the skills and disciplines I learned in that time. In this new home, I resolved, I must put away childish things.

The greatest tests of my resolve were the lessons held three times a week with an old Herder priest. His only theme seemed to be sin and damnation, and how the evil of the Oldtimers lived on in the new world. He seemed to enjoy making us jump or cower. As we approached the room in which he held his lessons, our feet dragged and we shared furtive looks. In such a restrained place, such looks spoke volumes.

One time, my age-mates and I arrived at the room before the Herder did. As we waited, I first arranged my workbooks, then took out a piece of mending I had promised to do. It was a dishcloth for the cook - another orphan had burned a hole in it, and I was to darn over the gap.

When the Herder came in, he took offence at my work. "If you are bored, it is a fault of self-control. You are here to occupy your mind, not only your body," he sneered.

I merely liked to keep busy, and I did not think there was anything wrong with that, but I said nothing.

"Tell me," he said suddenly, "why herbal lore is banned."

I gaped a little. I had no good answer. "I don't know," I said humbly. "I only know it is Lud-damned."

He sneered, but my reply was so weak he could find nothing to say about it.

"Surely one of you can do better than that," he said instead.

After a moment's pause, a dark-haired boy near the front of the class raised his hand.

"Jes," the Herder acknowledged him.

In a flat, careful tone, the boy recited, "The Oldtimers, in their arrogance, tried to find out every secret of nature so that they would be masters of the world Lud gave them. Not content with that, they also tried to change what is natural, making plants and weather and oceans do what they wanted. To punish them, Lud turned nature against them by bringing the Great White, which changed the world forever. Herbal lore shows the old arrogance, and even comes from Oldtime books. That is why no one should practice medicine except for Herders who have studied Lud's will and the way that men and the world have changed since the Great White."

I had never heard praise from the Herder before, and I did not hear it now - but he smiled, briefly and thinly, before setting out the lesson for the day.

I glanced once again at the boy, Jes, wondering if he was proud of his successful answer, but he was frowning a little, as though he himself was not satisfied with his words.

For all his sober demeanour, there was something about him that drew others to him. I saw that I was not the only other orphan to look to him for cues, in that lesson or others. Jes was in favour with the guardians, but I did not think he was a tale-teller.

After that lesson, the Herder took special notice of me, singling me out for questions he expected I would not be able to answer. 

I kept a calm manner, but this did not mollify him. At last, I approached Jes and asked him to help me with Herder lore. 

In truth it was not the lessons I cared about so much as an approved way to talk at length with another person.

Jes shook his head. "I am not a Herder's assistant, and may not give instruction," he said. 

"Then teach me how to fit in here, instead," I said. I knew he would think it bold, but having already approached him, I thought it hardly mattered if I spoke further. "I am sick of silent meals and suspicion. But those do not seem to trouble you." 

Jes said, jeering a little, "Because I need no friends, you wish me to befriend you?"

It sounded foolish. "Yes," I said, and I laughed, daring him to laugh with me.

I did not manage it then.

I bore up better than some of the other children under the Herder's chastisements. One lesson left two younger children in tears.

"One day this will be behind us," I said, hoping to comfort them.

Jes, overhearing this, looked sharply at me. "Lud's law cannot be so easily cast aside," he said.

"Of course not," I said easily. I had meant no heresy. "But ere long we will be men and women of the Land, and done with teachers. Our consciences, not our lessons, will dictate what we do.”

One of the boys to whom I had been speaking gave a hopeless sob, too exhausted by his misery to pay any heed to me, but I seemed to have caught _Jes'_ attention. His look brightened to curiosity before he turned away.

Another time in the Herder's classroom, I myself came close to tears. The Herder was trumpeting on about the Oldtimers and how they had left in us a legacy of corruption. It was a subject that disturbed me, because I had barely known my mother, and I did not like to think that I had been tainted by her thoughts of sedition in a way I could neither remember nor control.

All of a sudden, the Herder broke off his speech.

"Jes," he said sharply. "Why are you smiling?"

I muffled a gasp. Surely Jes would not betray a mocking attitude.

"I was thinking of the Oldtimers, and the punishment visited upon them," Jes said in a quiet, considered way.

"And that is cause for rejoicing?" the Herder demanded.

Again Jes seemed to consider seriously before he spoke. "Two days ago, you talked about guilt," he said. "You talked about the conscience of a man who commits a crime in secret, and how the deed eats into his soul until it is poisoned entirely. You spoke of how a punishment that is avoided grows in the mind and is far worse than a punishment faced." He paused, looking at the Herder for approval to continue. The Herder gave a curt nod.

"I was thinking that we should be grateful that Lud visited such a terrible thing as the Great White upon the Oldtimers," Jes said simply. "We live in the shadow of their punishment, but not in the dread of it. And now that we have been punished, we may be forgiven."

I had often heard the Kinraide Herder and others say that we ought to be grateful for Lud's mercy, but I had never heard the idea of gratitude expressed with such power as Jes said it then. It was as if he were saying that we were all free, in a way I had never imagined before. The pressure of tears faded from behind my eyes.

The Herder stared at Jes, but Jes' face was utterly serious, and we were all entranced too. The suspicion on the Herder’s face changed to a deeper calculation.

" _May_ be forgiven," he emphasised, and he went on with his sermon. Soon he had reached previous heights of thundering threat.

When we were unobserved, I sought Jes out.

"Jes, that was wonderful," I said, "what you said to the Herder."

He flushed a little, though I had the sense my praise was not unwelcome. "You see why I am not approved to give instruction," he said.

"I am not so sure about that," I replied. There was belief in Jes. Even if Jes' thoughts did not fully conform to Herder doctrine, I felt that the Herder would be foolish to ignore Jes' _desire_ to believe.

Jes stared at me, as taken aback as he might have been had I said all my thoughts aloud. 

"Anyway," I said shyly, "I wanted to say thank you, too." It sounded silly and I was sure that Jes would say he had not spoken on my behalf, but he did not; he did not say anything. At last, I ducked my head and hurried off, my heart beating strangely fast.

As the days lengthened, and the ground thawed, our indoor lessons were cut short and we spent more time in outside chores. As well as vegetable plots, the Kinraide grounds held many formal flower beds, and all must be readied for spring.

Slowly I made acquaintances - not friends, as I had had at Morganna, for unlike those friendships, these fragile alliances would take no strain. 

Jes and I worked together often. Mindful of his earlier responses, I did not speak to him, but still I found myself noticing how he acted and what he said. His words rejecting sin and fear continued to warm me, as did his presence. I told myself it was only a liking, and did not matter. 

One day, though, I looked up to find he had fallen into step with me. I acknowledged him with a nod, wondering what business he had with me, and he smiled.

"You asked me to teach you how things are done here," he said. "You seem to have learned well enough."

"Never think that you escaped instructing me," I replied, thinking of how I had watched him. And, surprised and gratified to have the chance, I added pertly, "And since I do not need your friendship, may I now count myself your friend?"

Then he did laugh, and I was glad.

It was a strange way to begin a friendship, and so it continued. Jes and I did not talk openly, but when we spoke, we ignored Kinraide entirely, and talked about Council lore, the world's dark past, and our own futures. Especially our futures. If there was one thing that Jes valued as highly in me as I valued in him, I think it was how vividly I imagined, and described, the ways I might make a life for myself when I was grown and free.

In many other ways, we were unequal. Distance came naturally to Jes, and not to me; his approval heartened me, and truly, he did not need mine. But Jes did not want to push people away as much as he did. I felt he was saddened by his own self-sufficiency. Seeing me with others, I think he was torn between disapproval of my easy air, and a wish that he could come as close to others in casual ways.

I loved him.

I do not pretend it was the kind of love that keeps bond-mates fond and loyal over many years, or that creates a deeper wisdom in oneself. I was young and I knew it; and although growing up at Halfmoon Bay and Saithwold and Morganna had instilled more trust in me than existed in the orphans who had been long at Kinraide, I had absorbed the lesson that only adults might safely make permanent attachments. 

So I spoke of the work I might find in Aborium or Sutrium, and Jes spoke of managing a small farm-holding with his sister, and though the futures we described might intertwine, they were distinct. 

Jes' sister Elspeth was also at Kinraide. I encountered her rarely, but I think she preferred it that way. Where Jes had a pull to him, a force that made you want to see what he was doing and catch his gaze, Elspeth seemed to possess its reverse. I never saw her with company of any kind. When you approached her, you felt as if you were trespassing on some private ground.

Yet, feeling towards Jes as I did, I wanted to try to speak to her. 

When the harvest of whitestick resumed, I had an opportunity; she and I were both assigned to the first expedition of the year. I moved close to Elspeth as the expedition started out. She responded to my attempts at conversation with indifference. Even when I mentioned Jes, she said nothing, and shortly moved away.

I had never been so close to the Blacklands before. Our guide, Elii, dismissed their dangers; our Herder safeguard, himself a child, quailed at them. In sympathy with the Herder, I tried to copy Elii's confidence, but even he frowned when he discovered our path blocked by a diverted stream.

He slung a rope down the path, tied it to a tree on our side, and bid us climb down. My heart sinking, I was sure I would fall and be washed away, but the only one who slipped was Elspeth. 

I was the first at her side when she landed - heavily - but to my relief, her eyes fluttered open and she seemed merely dazed. We hauled her out of the stream and the Herder bandaged a slight cut on her forehead.

"Was the water tainted?" Elspeth asked. I was surprised at her audacity, but later I recognised it as caution, too. It was better to have that denied at once, and in front of others, than to have the speculation linger.

Shortly, we moved on.

The place where whitestick grew - or precipitated; I was not sure exactly - was a dark and narrow valley called the Silent Vale. As we descended, we huddled close together, and some of even Elspeth's reserve fell away. No one was impervious to the menace of a place like that. 

The closest we came to an understanding, though, was a speaking look. Another orphan spoke rashly about the Herders' use of whitestick, and Elspeth caught my eye. I said nothing, and hoped she understood by that my unwillingness to report it; but I reflected that speaking by inference was ever an imperfect art, and one unlikely to foster trust.

We took a longer path on our return, but, with the Blacklands behind and not before us, we made better time.

As we entered the Kinraide grounds again, we were told to load our bags of the powdery whitestick into sacks for transport. Jes was among the orphans directed to help us. I saw him look first for Elspeth and then me; she glanced at his arm, and I saw her shudder. 

Jes wore the sigil of a Herder's assistant.

Although I had known this was coming, I wished I had been in Kinraide that day to celebrate with Jes, for it seemed that Elspeth's revulsion spoiled what pleasure he might have taken in his advancement.

"I cannot say I do what I do for her sake," he said bitterly to me, "but I do wish her to benefit. Sometimes I think her only desire is to go back to our parents' farm, and pretend it were never burned nor the animals taken. She refuses to live in the world around her, and merely by doing that myself, I leave her behind."

"You are very different people," I said. 

A strange look came across Jes' face; I had no idea what he was thinking.

For a little while after the expedition, Elspeth had headaches, and once or twice she fainted. I heard the guardians talk about her affliction as a poor beginning to the year's harvest.

Jes was alarmed when I mentioned this to him. "She should not have drawn attention to herself," he said.

I wondered at his logic. "I saw her fall," I said. "She was not badly hurt, but even so, there is no need for her to strain herself further, pretending she is well." It seemed strange to me that I was in the position of defending Elspeth to her brother, but he was ever contrary when she was concerned.

The expeditions resumed, and Elii determined a new path to the valley where whitestick was found. This route required us to start out long before dawn, and return after nightfall. On each day that followed such an expedition, those who had gone were excused many of their other chores; I lost the sense of the usual rhythm of days.

I heard mention that we had received an unusual visitor, a woman from the mountain keep of Obernewtyn, but I only ever saw her at an assembly called to mark the end of her visit. That morning, Elspeth and I worked in the kitchens together, and Elspeth was sent off with a tea-tray for the keepers.

She returned shaking and wild-eyed, calling for her brother. 

I could not tell the source of her distress, but Jes understood it instantly, and seemed to feel it too, as though Elspeth's fear were a fire that leaped from her to him.

I sat Elspeth down and brought her water and powders. "I'm sorry," she whispered to me.

"What is the matter?" I asked them both, feeling that this went beyond simple dizziness.

"We think Elspeth will be declared a Misfit," Jes said.

I wanted to say that it could not be so, that surely his fear was excessive. But he was so certain. "She has begun to have unnatural dreams," he confessed to me.

"Surely they will not condemn her for that," I cried out. "She was normal before the accident..."

But even as I said that, I knew it was not really true. 

Not all Misfits were proven mutants who had demonstrated their strange powers; some were simply those who did not fit into society. And who to decide that, except those who did fit? I bitterly resented the Council and our keepers at that moment: they warned us against associations, fearing the rise of young rebels, but then they punished us for the withdrawn and antisocial behaviours they themselves had taught us.

I thought of the whitestick we had packed for transport to another Council farm. Now Elspeth herself might be sent to the processing facility. Marked; too dangerous to touch.

But that was not the end of everything. "You could petition for her once you have your own Certificate," I said to Jes.

He merely looked at me, and I realised that just as his position of influence might assist Elspeth, Elspeth's disfavour might harm him.

"They might even take me," he said. I could not believe that so much was in jeopardy, and so quickly.

"I will come too if they take you," I said, desperately and rashly, though I had no idea how I might cause that to happen. "I could pretend," I began, wondering how I might seem Misfit by my actions. But Jes was not listening, and I was not even sure what I would say if he were.

It was easy enough to draw the Council's wrath, but sedition was too dangerous to risk even for Jes. I wondered if I myself might claim true dreams. Only, how did true dreamers _know_ their dreams were true? I could hardly predict an event, and then expect it to happen.

As I was thinking this, Elspeth caught my eye, and I had the strangest feeling of certainty, as if Lud or some unnatural power had heard my pondering. I _knew_ , truly knew that whatever she or I or Jes did, Elspeth would be taken away - and to Obernewtyn, the mountain keep whence our visitor hailed. 

I could only protect myself, and Jes. I had no power to help Elspeth.

Jes said, "You must go. Never speak of this or us again. It is bad enough that we have been seen together."

 _No_ , I thought, hurt again by this further helplessness. 

But the queer sense I had of knowing the difference between what I might change, and what I might not, sustained me.

However I thought of it, I could see only one action to take: I must go to the keepers and tell them of Elspeth's dreams. I was one of the few people who had been present when the Herder had declared the waters of the stream un-tainted. I could confuse that matter. As I had said, to be tainted by water from the Blacklands was a minor strike against Elspeth - far less serious than to be believe Misfit by birth. It would bring her deviance to light, but that would happen anyway.

I did not at first know _how_ I should sow these seeds. It was not as simple to inform on another orphan as I might have thought. At last, I remembered the powder I had given Elspeth to calm her. I went to the keeper who kept the infirmary, and mentioned my use of the powder, under the pretense that our stocks were low. Innocently, I said that I hoped it would help purge her dreams of their strange omens.

This caught the keeper's attention, and he questioned me sharply. I acted as though Elspeth's dreams were common knowledge, as much as her headaches and fainting. 

The keeper dismissed me, and I felt sick at what I had done. _I_ was no oracle, surely. And even if my sudden thought had been a true one - even if I had been privy to knowledge of the future that ordinary people could not have - what had compelled me to act on it? Further, if it was foreordained that Elspeth would be declaired Misfit, why must _I_ set that in motion?

I could not justify what I had done, except as cowardice; nor was there any comfort to be had in the idea of protecting Jes, for he had not, and would not, ask for that.

Elspeth was declared Misfit within the day. We were assembled for the announcement, and although it might be the last time I would set eyes on her, I could not look at her. 

Nor did I approach Jes, since he had forbidden that.

In time, he approached me.

"Perhaps it is for the best," he said; "so she said to me, in farewell," and I took heart, although I did not want to agree too easily.

With Elspeth gone to Obernewtyn, there were deep changes in Jes. He laughed more, was less troubled by rash opinions or minor infractions in others, and was more willing to be seen in my company. I was happy for that, though my guilt was ever present too.

I realised that the judgment that had fallen on Elspeth was something Jes had always feared, and he had always feared, too, that he would be condemned alongside her. I began to understand this fear. When I had first known Elspeth and Jes, I had believed them both normal; but that was because I could not bear to think of _Jes_ as unnatural in any way, and so I had refused to think that way of Elspeth too. 

Now that link was broken, and brother and sister must each make their own way. 

I spoke of my own mother to Jes, thinking it would comfort him, though my thoughts of her were mingled dark and light. She had been accused of sedition when I was very young, and had been pursued by the Council - at last she had fled to the highlands, leaving me behind for pursuing soldierguards to find. I had been four years old, and had only the dimmest memory of her face.

"The keepers at Saithwold used to say that was just like a Seditioner, abandoning a child," I said, feeling the old hurt of their words. "But although I should despise her, too, I cannot. I always imagine that she feared the end I would come to, since she risked it for herself. Maybe she thought that leaving me behind was the best thing she could do."

I feared a denial, or a glib answer, but Jes only stroked my hair.

Another Change came to Kinraide, with many orphans sent away and many others brought from other homes across the Land. To my relief, Jes and I were not separated. I began to imagine that we might leave Kinraide together.

But as Jes came to treat matters of the world and heart more lightly, he made other acquaintances, even friends. I could not feel sorry that he was less lonely, but I did regret, a little, that I must share his regard.

One friendship was inexplicable to me. The boy in question, Barden, was a little older than Jes, but he was less cautious. There were whispers that his Normalcy Certificate was halfway denied already because of careless words he had uttered in other homes. I even heard Barden allude to this himself, with a jeering pride, as though it was a fine thing to provoke the Council's displeasure.

Jes' friendship with this boy divided us. At last I even asked Jes what drew him to the older boy, but Jes would not answer me. I would not have asked if I had not feared for him. I wondered if all Jes' caution had been bound up in Elspeth, and if, now that she was gone, he was almost a different person.

In fact, he was more different than I imagined.

I feared I would drive Jes away by questioning his other friendships. That did not happen; instead, he finally gave me an answer so strange I thought he was joking.

"I am a Misfit," he said, "and so is Barden."

He could do terrible, wonderful things. I could think of a question for him while I was working in the kitchens, and even though he might be on an expedition to the Silent Vale, he could send me a silent answer. He could kiss me, and then put in my mind his own feeling of this kiss. He could make me feel joyful and shamed and angry all in a moment, for no cause at all, only that he directed my thoughts.

He had the power to find out what I had done to Elspeth. I feared his gifts. That did not surprise him.

"We are feared throughout the Land," he said, and I realised with a kind of horror that there were far more people like him than I had imagined. 

He shared with me plans for all Misfit orphans to break out of their homes at once, and assemble - somewhere - to start a new life. I could not imagine how they would succeed.

In all that terrible time, I was more afraid _for_ him than I was _of_ him.

I wished for gifts of my own: I wished for another moment of certainty as I had had with Elspeth, of her doom, to let me know how I might protect Jes again. But I had nothing, and I could not protect him from himself.

I could not persuade him from his plans.

It seemed my role was only to witness their failure.

On the night planned for his escape, he left from my window; it was sentimental and foolish, but I was glad that he cared enough for me for that goodbye. 

He was shot as he climbed down.

I only later comprehended the arrow, and whence it had flown, because of the horrible way he fell, with his leg cracking under him.

A strange battle followed. I believe it was a battle, although Jes made no sign, only moans; for the soldierguards who meant to torture him died without a finger laid on them, and with screams as terrible as his.

They meant to keep him and question him, but he forced them to kill him. 

I was all they had left; it seemed they had caught Barden in the minutes before Jes made to go. 

They questioned me, of course. They took me from Kinraide in a wagon escorted by soldierguards. I was dull and dazed at first; they thought I was stubborn, and threatened me with torture. It was more credit than I deserved, I think. I was not tight-lipped out of loyalty, only out of shock. There was no one left to protect except myself. Having been taken from Kinraide, I already suspected I would never go back. I shuddered at the bodies they showed me, certainly enough, and at the instruments they laid against my skin in threat. But I did not mean to defy them.

When they had got what information they could out of me, they sent me to Obernewtyn.

I came to myself on a cold road with thunder and winds howling about me, alone in the carriage and alone in my mind.

I remembered saying to Jes that if he went to Obernewtyn, so would I; it seemed so queer that events had fallen differently, and yet they had conspired to send me here.

I grieved for Jes, and I was glad that no one could hear me as my tears first fell. It seemed to me that I had never known him - or instead, that the Jes I had known was the person he had wanted to be. When I had first met him, he had not merely hidden a part of himself, but denied it. It seemed to me that that was the root of destiny: the fates that ensnared us were not a whim chosen by a higher power, but were determined by the dark and light we hid within ourselves. Perhaps anyone could dream truly, and see the path ahead of them, if they were willing to know themselves.

But to know one's self was not a thing that was easily done, or borne.

I thought I understood the Herders, then, and their obsession with sin. I understood why they were so intent to find the root of the Oldtimers' evil, and discover whether it truly survived in us.

I had one last trial to face: when I arrived at Obernewtyn, Elspeth demanded news of her brother, and I must recount for her how he had died.

I did not want to.

"I made you tell them about me," she said, as if to shock me.

I did not care to hear about that, and yet it felt as though a piece of a puzzle fell into place.

When I had told her the full story, and she had left me alone again, I thought on my betrayal of her, which was truly her betrayal of me.

All this time, I had thought myself a coward and untrue. And yet, was anything different? Was I less, or more, to blame for how events had fallen? I did not know.

I deeply wished to know. I thought on my ideas about destiny, and fate. It slowly came to me that here at Obernewtyn were many who saw their futures, and who faced these questions. It was not safe to speak of these things openly, but I would find a way. 

If others such as Elspeth directed my path again, I might know it simply by comparing my past actions with those I desired to take. I had not been used to think of myself as a traitor. I should have trusted that belief. You cannot know what you will do, people say, when terrible things happen, and you are put to the test, but I thought: here, I must. I can.


End file.
